The Blessing of Uncertainty

The Blessing of Uncertainty January 28, 2025

By Rabbi Gita Karasov

Parashat Bo (Exodus 10:1-13:16)

One of the ways I like to end classes I teach is by asking participants to go around the room and fill in the sentence: “I now know…”

This prompt gives people a chance to ask themselves what they have learned. “What do I know about myself, the text, this tradition, that I didn’t know an hour ago?” This is both a helpful tool for me to hear what people are taking away from the class and a helpful reflection for the student to concretize one aspect of their learning. I typically think of this process as a linear one: I now know something that my past self didn’t. But after reading this week’s parsha, Parshat Bo, I am thinking of the question a little differently.

Maybe it is more accurate to ask oneself the following: “What is something that I now think I know, something I feel certain of at this moment, that later will most likely change, evolve, and perhaps someday I will need to unknow to make room for a new understanding. Because after all, isn’t any sense of “knowing” anything for certain, just a fleeting feeling?

In this week’s parsha, God tells Moshe: This final plague will be so bad that the Israelites will certainly “know that I am God.” וִֽידַעְתֶּ֖ם כִּי־אֲנִ֥י יְהֹוָֽה׃ (Exodus 10:12).

What about this moment will allow the Israelites to finally know God? And, as anyone familiar with the rest of the Torah knows, whatever certainty and belief in God the Israelites experience at this stage of the narrative is fleeting. They may come to know God on their final night in Egypt, at the crossing of the sea, or at the foot of Mount Sinai, but none of those knowings are enduring. There will always be doubt that creeps back in, always new chapters of knowing, unknowing and relearning.

As if the parsha anticipated my discomfort with this notion of enduring certainty, the text pauses rather abruptly. Before the narrative continues with the epic night we reenact every year at the Passover seder, there is a brief interlude in which God gives the Israelites the first mitzvah they will receive as the Jewish people. This is the mitzvah of Rosh Chodesh, of the new month.

הַחֹ֧דֶשׁ הַזֶּ֛ה לָכֶ֖ם רֹ֣אשׁ חֳדָשִׁ֑ים רִאשׁ֥וֹן הוּא֙ לָכֶ֔ם לְחׇדְשֵׁ֖י הַשָּׁנָֽה

This month shall mark for you the beginning of the months; it shall be the first of the months of the year for you (Exodus 12:2).

As the Jewish people leave Egypt and become a free people, they will now keep time in a new way. They will build their calendar around the cycles of the moon. And how will they know when in the moon’s cycle to begin counting a month? At the moment when they see the moon renewing itself each month, that is when they will begin their counting.

The placement of this mitzvah is striking. While we are in the middle of reading about the momentous event of the Exodus, the Torah offers an interlude to explain where this one night of knowing will live in Jewish time. The Jewish people will order their lives and their relationship to God not around a single event, but according to the ever-changing cycles of the moon. The moon represents process; in fact, the only kind of certainty that the moon represents is that every stage is temporary — every ounce of light that exists today will be different tomorrow.

In this vein, the Sages in the Talmud Bavli Tractate Sanhedrin discuss what the appropriate blessing should be over a new moon.

Rav Aha of Difti suggests that we bless the moon depending on its stage at a given moment; using one blessing when the moon is waxing, and one when it is waning:

אֲמַר לֵיהּ רַב אַחָא מִדִּיפְתִּי לְרָבִינָא: וְלִיבָרֵיךְ ״הַטּוֹב וְהַמֵּטִיב״! אֲמַר לֵיהּ: אַטּוּ כִּי חָסַר מִי מְבָרְכִינַן ״דַּיַּין הָאֱמֶת״, דִּלְבָרֵיךְ ״הַטּוֹב וְהַמֵּטִיב״ וְלִיבָרְכִינְהוּ לְתַרְוַיְיהוּ כֵּיוָן דְּהַיְינוּ אוֹרְחֵיהּ, לָא מְבָרְכִינַן

“Rav Aha of Difti said to Ravina: we say the blessing of Hatov v’Hameitiv — for the good and the one who bestows good.” Ravina said to him: Is that to say that when the moon is shrinking we bless: “Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, the True Judge,” so that we should conversely bless: “Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, Who is good and Who does good,” when the moon is growing!? Rav Aḥa of Difti said to him: we should say them both” (Sanhedrin 42a).

Rav Aha of Dfti is suggesting that when the moon is growing in light, we say the general catch-all blessing for when good things happen in our lives; and conversely, he suggests that when the moon is waning, we say the blessing that we usually say upon hearing news of death.

“No”, Ravina responds: “It is the nature of the moon to wax and wane and we do not bless the moon for these specific moments” (Sanhedrin 42a). We do not distill the essence of the moon to one specific moment, but rather we come to know its essence as constant change.

And it is this ever-evolving and renewing nature of the moon that the Sages teach us is exactly where we will find God. The conversation in the Talmud continues to say that blessing the new month in its proper time is like greeting the face of the Divine presence itself (Sanhedrin 42a). Just as knowing the moon is knowing change and renewal, so too knowing God is seeing opportunities for change and glimpses of renewal without becoming stuck in fixed certainty. We come to know God through process.

Blessing the new moon reminds us that we are always evolving and no single moment of knowing is enduring. Therefore every month, when we bless the new moon, we use the blessing that Rav Yehuda offers later on in the Talmudic discussion. In this version we do not bless the moon for any of its specific temporary stages; rather we bless it for the gift of renewal it inspires in us:

וְלַלְּבָנָה אָמַר שֶׁתִּתְחַדֵּשׁ עֲטֶרֶת תִּפְאֶרֶת לַעֲמוּסֵי בָטֶן, שֶׁהֵן עֲתִידִין לְהִתְחַדֵּשׁ כְּמוֹתָהּ וּלְפָאֵר לְיוֹצְרָם עַל שֵׁם כְּבוֹד מַלְכוּתוֹ. בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה׳ מְחַדֵּשׁ חֳדָשִׁים״

“And to the moon God said: “Renew yourself! A crown of beauty to those carried in the womb who are destined to renew themselves like her (the moon) and to glorify the One who formed them for the name of God’s glorious kingdom. Blessed are Y-H-V-H, Who renews the renewing months.”
(Sanhedrin 42a)

This blessing is recited during the Kiddush Levana ceremony, when we bless the appearance of the new moon each month. We pray that just as the moon is in a constant state of renewal, so too may we see the ever-present opportunities for renewal within ourselves. During this month of Shevat, may we all be blessed to seek out moments of unknowing and relearning, of certainty and doubt, and the humility to ask ourselves “What am I noticing now?” and “What did I know yesterday that I am a bit less certain of today?”

Rabbi Gita Karasov is the Dean of Students and Admissions at the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College where she accompanies prospective and current students on their paths towards the rabbinate. When she is not in her office outside the Beit Midrash, she is likely chasing her kids around Somerville.

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